Almost three years ago, BJ Lofback and Carlos Davis hit the Nashville streets in their tricked-out food truck. With a dedication to fresh, innovative fare and bold, globally inspired flavors, Riffs Fine Street Food quickly garnered a huge following.

As the business grew, they expanded with catering and pop-up dinners (as well as the formation of the Nashville Food Trucks Association). In time the partners saw the need for a fixed location to augment their work from the mobile kitchen.

Tucked in the ground floor of Building 2 in the Highland Ridge office park, Riffs Cafe may seem a bit off the beaten path for many of us. But since last fall, the Riffs team has been serving terrific coffee, breakfast and lunch to a grateful business community. The pickins for independent restaurants and fresh food are indeed slim in the area.

Fans of Riffs food truck won’t have to wait for balmier weather to get their Korean barbecue taco or jerk chicken fix. A weekday trek out to the eatery off Elm Hill Pike near the airport is easy and worthwhile.

Start day right

Serviceable, speedy, affordable, delicious: The cafe opens at 6:30 a.m., manned to get you ready to face the daily grind. Riffs partnered with Intelligentsia Coffee out of Chicago for its beans; head barista Nick Guidry sees that those beans get transformed into ultra-smooth, full-bodied brews.

Step up to the counter; the menu and express ordering process are designed with the worker’s time and budget constraints in mind. There are several tables in the sunny dining area, although take-out comprises a high percentage of the business.

Breakfast begins right with eggs cooked to order. You can get ’em grab-and-go style either in biscuits slapped with Cheddar and bacon or wrapped in a tortilla with grilled onions and potatoes. But that cheesy scramble parked on a pile of hash browns with sausage-studded sawmill gravy — you’d better sit down to that plate with a fork and knife.

Amazing bread

Before we talk about the sandwiches, we have a few comments about bread. Audra Dykes, who first demonstrated her baking talents at Coffee, Lunch in Cummins Station, joined the Riffs team as pastry chef. All of the baked goods — from flaky biscuit to a soft hoagie roll to brioche bun — are the result of her handiwork.

Sandwiches, whether the Breakfast Sammy with bacon and eggs or the Bonnaroo — salt and pepper focaccia with grilled pesto portobello mushrooms, are only as good as the bread upon which they are made. Her breads, biscuits and rolls will make you want to set aside any no-carb intentions.

Chef Drew Whitney’s menu offers a nice balance of tradition and innovation. The burgers and fries are extraordinary. You can get the Retro burger — classic, with American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles on brioche roll, and be content. But go for the Top Hat. White Cheddar, bacon-onion hash and Riffs’ secret sauce (akin to comeback sauce, perhaps?) cap off the grilled beef patty, juicy and satisfying.

Creative touch

As much as we enjoy the classics, it’s the more creative sandwiches that draw us back, such as the Bob Marley. Jerk chicken, deftly spiced and grilled, comes dressed with slaw, grilled pineapple and red pepper aioli, a harmony of textures and sweet-sour-pungent tastes. Or, the Low and Slow: A mound of roasted pulled pork plumps up the hoagie, embellished with white Cheddar, Tabasco aioli and sumptuous, bitterly delicious braised collard greens.

Check out the display case for the daily array of tempting sweets: playful riffs on childhood faves that change daily. “Starcrunch” is like a Rice Krispies treat, enrobed in dark chocolate. That same chocolate cloaks the almond-coconut bar, a kind of melding of Almond Joy and Mounds.

The Oatmeal Cream Pie derives its inspiration from the Little Debbie confection, but Little Debbies were never this good. We have yet to arrive on a day when Dykes’ legendary Moon Pie is available, but that is something to anticipate.

Nancy Vienneau is a chef and retired caterer with 25 years of experience. She cooks and teaches at Second Harvest and blogs about her adventures with food at http://nancyvienneau.com/. Reviews are written from anonymous visits to restaurants. Negative reviews are based on two or more visits. The Tennessean pays for all meals.